Washington was built on a swamp. In the summer, temperatures can reach over 100 degrees -- as they did over the last few days when I made the rounds of Washington Democrats, repeatedly asking why no bold jobs plan is emerging.
Here's a sample of their responses:
"Dead in the water. We'll be lucky if we get votes to raise the debt ceiling without major spending cuts this year and next."
"Are you kidding? It's all budget deficit, budget deficit, budget deficit. Nobody's thinking about anything else."
"Republicans beat us up so bad over the first stimulus there's no way we're gonna try for a second."
"We got them [Republicans] cornered on Medicare. Now they want to change the subject to jobs. Forget it."
"No need. We'll see job growth in the second half of the year."
"The President doesn't want to put anything on the table he can't get through Congress."
And so it went. Not a shred of urgency.
This morning I was on ABC's This Week, debating jobs and the economy with Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. Shelby restated the standard Republican playbook of spending cuts and tax cuts (except for one instant when he inadvertently conceded America emerged from the Great Depression only when government spent big time mobilizing the nation for World War II).
But what struck me most was the similarity between Shelby's overall attitude and that of the Democrats I talked with -- a kind of shrug of the shoulders, a sense that it's really not all that bad out there, and that nothing can be done anyway. (In the green room, before going on, Shelby told me employment in northern Alabama was actually fairly good and the problem was near the coast.)
The recovery is stalling across the nation yet in the Washington swamp it's business as usual.
Americans are scared, with reason. We're in a vicious cycle in which lower wages and net job losses and high debt are causing consumers to cut their spending -- which is causing businesses to cut back on hiring and reduce pay. There's no way out of this morass without bold leadership from Washington to rekindle consumer demand.
If the Democrats remain silent, the vacuum will be filled by the Republican snake oil of federal spending cuts and cut taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. Democrats -- starting with the President -- must have the courage and conviction to tell the nation the recovery is stalling, and what must be done.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
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I occasionally read "The Examiner" tabloid newspaper just to see what kind of crazy right wing punditry is out there.
In their June 23rd issue I found an interesting graph. Basically this drew horizontal lines representing fiscal activity over several decades. The “revenue” line was fairly flat over the period while the "spending" line was rapidly rising essentially beginning in year 2000.
Why does spending keep increasing? First, we will stipulate that a relatively small part were for like bridges to nowhere and economically stupid subsidies.
But take note the following expanded spending exponentially:
* Bush instigated wars, Iraq and Afghanistan
* Bush enactment of the pharmaceutical benefits added to Medicare
* Bush deregulation of banking and financiers leading to bubble and crash causing Bush and successors to spend billions in bank rescue loans and economic stimulus & unemployment relief.
* Oil spill disaster enhanced by Bush appointed regulators falling asleep.
* temporary expense to counter the explosive growth of health care costs and insurance premiums.
* rapid anticipated increase in the aging of U.S. population
* dealing with the influx of millions of refugees (legal and illegal) seeking free hospital care and diverse federally provided benefits to the poor.
I think we have passed the point of no return in this country, and untill someone with guts and integrity steps up, maybe you?, we may as well pack it up and hunker down.
Most posters on here just want to do bitch, much les get out and actually show their disenchantment by taking the time to march on DC in an organized well palnned march of millions. That shows me not many are willing to do what it takes to get anything changed.
Better to remain silent than to give a nervous chuckle and admit the 'shovel ready' jobs weren't as shovel ready as you had thought.
Talk about an unforced error......
it??? Like they did with the other job bills they blocked and that people don't know about??? They
said they promised to pass job bills, They lied as usual, It is more imporant to them that the Gov.
fails so they can get rid of Obama!!! They don't care about jobs or people unless they are rich!!!!
The gop wants a government for big business BUY BIG business!!!! !!!
Why aren't the dem's and news showing that some gop states are trying to out law brith control bills
where are the womans groups????
http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/
Programs to correct this would create real jobs building real things and using debt to acquire real assets should be understandable by anyone who has bought a home or started a business. Our grandparents built their way out of the Great Depression. They built things that we are still using today.
what helps is not just 'building' things willy-nilly, but actually doing things (which could include building things...) which are considered valuable BY THE MARKET and are thus relative to all OTHER possible things to be doing with our very scarce resources...
what is a 'real thing' as opposed to some other type?
Federal funding to identify and enact the one most life cycle energy effficient improvement to every structure in the U.S.A. using products at least 75% or so produced in our country. This is the very same suggestion I made before the original and ineffictive stimulous.
Farmers have come to be viewed with disdain, manufacturing work viewed as beneath us, sole propietorships as overpriced and inefficient. Lying and cheating are embraced by two generations now as the only way to succeed.
The solution is not more phantom money in a misguided attempt to stimulate the financial sector. The solution is not more inefficient, wasteful, slow-moving, graft filled, over-regulated, federal stimulous.
The solution is not to inflate the economy to make the public debt appear less onerous.
The solution is very hard to swallow and is likely to hurt most those who have the most. But since they own the government, we will harm those with the least the most in ill-guided attempts to restore an unsustainable model.
Some Solutions:
1) Either establish uniform financial regulations throughout the world that eliminate tax havens (including Switzerland) or withdrawl from our disastrous free trade agreements and establish punitive tariffs.
2) End our utterly impossible war in Afghanistan as well as all military aid in the Middle East.
3) Eliminate the ability of lawyers, drug makers and health providers to advertise their services.
4) Eliminate the Department of Education and NCLB. Greatly restrain OSHA and the EPA.
5) Establish a single-payer health care system with the power not only to negotiate prices but to determine reasonable treatments on the public.
Yes, I see the inherent conflict in my proposals, but the alternative is to eliminate ALL government-sponsored health care.
6) Establish a tiny trading fee or human-based time constraint to eliminate high-speed trading among markets.
7) Greatly simplify the Federal Income Tax code making it flatter with few--if any--deductions and only credits to those in true need.
8) Let disability be determined completely by medical assessment and not "advocates".
9) Require a period of extremely lightly paid federal service for all youths.
10) Repeal the Patriot's Act in its entirety.
11) Enact the ERA
I am out of room...
Indeed, entitlements need to be slashed: the sense of entitlement of the have-alls and the super-rich who ran the economy into the ground with their gambling, the entitlements of the defense contractors who get away with charging an arm and a leg for everything, the handouts to the oil companies, the almost-free public land being donated to the coal companies and cattle grazers, the sense of entitlement that BP feels in exercising its right to destroy our oceans and our coasts...
plus lots of money was wasted on Bush's dumb wars & his recession made unemployment high.
80% agree we need to keep social security & medicare & are against cutting them .
Ryan's plan to kill medicare is unpopular & scared most senior citizens & middle aged.